i found the cause of the oil leak in the galaxie!

i’m troubleshooting the leaking oil in the galaxy 500 and my first thought is that a deteriorated valve cover gasket is causing the problem. the engine exhaust doesn’t smell sweet and there’s no oil in the radiator fluid so it’s unlikely to be a head gasket issue.

when i went to the local auto parts store, the guy behind the counter said he’d love to sell me a valve cover gasket ( only $20 ) but asked if i had tightened down the valve cover bolts recently.

“uh, nope. and to be honest i couldn’t remember when i would have thought to tighten them.”

“give it a try. i’ve seen valve covers so loose that oil starts seeping out.”

i went home and sure enough the valve cover bolts were so loose that i almost couldn’t believe the covers stayed on! i was sure that had to be the cause of the leak since the oil seemed to be coming in out of the bolt hole that had one of the loosest bolts. it couldn’t be a coincidence!

so i tightened the bolts, cleaned up the oil that leaked on the block and started the engine.

the result? the oil was pouring out of the same area faster than ever! what was going on? i couldn’t quite tell because it was hard to watch the oil leak and start the car at the same time but it didn’t take too long to figure it out.

while i was poking around i discovered this line appeared to be completely severed! it wasn’t obvious at all that it was severed because it was running through the clip attached to the bolt that seemed to be the main source of the leak. i turned the engine over and sure enough oil came spurting out of the lower section of line that emerged from the engine block. the line looked like it went into the main cabin bundled with a few other lines. i wondered why pressurized oil would be going into the main cabin and it took me a few seconds to come to the rather obvious conclusion.

it’s the line for the after market oil pressure gauge that sits under the dash. it must have developed a small crack right under the clip that held it in place and i broke it completely when i cleaned up the oil around the bold holding the clip.

conflux - a curated confluence of curiousness

i’m not sure how to square these findings with the fact that i’ve long said that in a parallel universe very close to our own i live alone in cabin in the middle of nowhere writing manifestos: “The effect of population density on life satisfaction was therefore more than twice as large for low-IQ individuals than for high-IQ individuals,” they found. And “more intelligent individuals were actually less satisfied with life if they socialized with their friends more frequently.”

the heart warming fable of thanksgiving, unsurprisingly, ends up being a whole lot more complicated than some of us were taught and answers the nagging question of how squanto spoke perfect english when the pilgrims arrived and what was happening during the 100 year interim between columbus and the pilgrims ( spoiler: it involves human trafficking, enslavement and villages being wiped out ). and if you’re a stickler for tradition, you should put ditch the turkey and cranberry sauce for salted pork and olives since the spanyiards were the first to celebrate thanksgiving 50 years before the pilgrims.

“…researchers from a Bosch startup called Deepfield Robotics presented a paper on “Vision-Based High-Speed Manipulation for Robotic Ultra-Precise Weed Control,” which has like four distinct exciting-sounding phrases in it.”IEEE Spectrum

after updating to iOS 9 and el capitan i’ve been having troubles synching photos from my iphone to my macbook air. the mac would recognize the iphone but no photos would show up in the photos application or image capture. it was driving me nuts. turns out, if you have non-apple services like dropbox running that sync your photos to non-icloud services you have to turn them off.

having run a half a dozen marathons, i can’t imagine finishing in 3:05. even more unimaginable in full amish garb so kudos to leroy stolzfus. the whole article is great read but now i want to know more of the backstory on why he started to run: “A few years ago, Stolzfus got “involved with some stuff” he said he shouldn’t have. His brother-in-law suggested he start running instead when he was tempted. He took the suggestion to heart, and went out for a run.”

huh, who knew edward tufte has a farm with 234-acres of landscape sculpture fields that he opens to the public once a year. i’d love to make a trip. and i also love the article’s description of tufte, “[he] is also known as a genius of data visualization, professor emeritus of political science, statistics, and computer science at Yale, an author of books on information design, and a hater of PowerPoint.

“The Chagossian people have a word, in their Creole language, for heartbreak: sagren. It is a profound sorrow which refers to the loss of a home, and the impossibility of returning to it. As we build new worlds with our technologies, knitted from fiber-optic light and lines of code, it is incumbent on us to ensure it does not reproduce the erasures and abuses of the old, but properly accounts for the rights and liberties of every one of us.”citizen-ex

“There is no doubt that retail is making a big bet on health care. If it succeeds, the payoff will be enormous. But just as Uber is at war with the taxi industry, retailers will soon be at war with the large, publicly-traded health care chains.”venture beat

wow.“Beginning with this weekend’s NHL All-Star Skills Competition and All-Star Game, the NHL will use GoPro cameras to deliver viewers never-before-seen perspectives of the game.” odin and i would watch this all. day. long. A++

“Our current cultural obsession with food is undeniable. But, while the advent of the foodie may be a 21st century phenomenon, from an evolutionary standpoint, flavor has long helped define who we are as a species, a new book argues.”npr

“Here’s the thing: in order for fees to work, there needs be something worth paying to avoid. That necessitates, at some level, a strategy that can be described as “calculated misery.” Basic service, without fees, must be sufficiently degraded in order to make people want to pay to escape it. And that’s where the suffering begins.”the new yorker